


To Whatever End

by Grundy



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canonical Character Death, First Age, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 14:24:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6708298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grundy/pseuds/Grundy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The deaths of the sons of Fëanor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Telufinwë Umbarto – It Ends In Fire

He nearly slept through his death. 

He had gone to sleep on the ship because the very ground underneath him felt wrong because of how they had reached it, and knowing that it would only be them coming – his father had been all too clear in his intentions. 

They were abandoning Artanis, Irissë, and all their brothers, who had trusted them – not Fëanaro, but his sons, the cousins they loved – enough to follow even after Alqualondë, even after Uncle Arafinwë turned back. They would be thrown to whatever scant mercy the Valar would show those who had broken the peace of Aman. His father cared not.

He could not stand it. So he went to sleep on the ship. True, in the back of his mind, there was a rebellious notion that if Fëanaro could steal a fleet from the Lindar, perhaps his son could steal a single ship, but it was no more than a thought half-formed. 

It was Ambarussa’s terror that woke him, panic and fear and pain, pain, pain, because he was being held back by too many hands no matter how desperately he thrashed and fought…

It would have been kinder if he had slept on. Smoke had been filling his lungs, lulling him into an easier end than the flames that had him now. The pain ripping through his hröa was all his own now, but intensified by what he could still feel from his frantic twin, fighting whoever it is that keeps them apart, beyond sense or reason, knowing only that he has to reach him, before…

In the last seconds, before all but the Doomsman’s voice fades away, he cannot tell if it is his twin or himself screaming.


	2. Turcafinwë Tyelkormo – Nothing Left To See

He never felt the stroke that killed him.

The rage was burning too hot for an inconsequential thing like pain to register – and the joy. Oh, the joy.

Because he’d done it at last. Revenged himself on Luthien Thingoliel, who had scorned a son of Fëanor as proudly as her father before her, yet stooped to sully herself with one of the engwar. Her son was born after she had persuaded the Judge to allow her mortality – born of two mortals, there will be no Halls for him, no rebirth in Aman. Whether they retrieve the Silmaril from the boy’s corpse or not, the mortal whelp will trouble them no more. He will never have to look on that face again.

In truth, it was not his father’s jewel that had driven him here. It was the burning anger that had never left him once Huan did. His fury that fate decreed that for obeying his father, he was damned, while for defying hers, she was rewarded. The rage that she thought love was a thing that mattered in these forsaken lands – when one of _her_ moriquendi filth had first stolen, then killed the one _he_ loved.

It was only when he heard Curvo’s bellow of impotent fury that he realized that the mortal boy was not the only one who would not see another sunrise. Somehow, it didn’t seem to matter. Without the rage, there would be nothing left of him anyway. He had died a long time ago. 

He just hadn’t realized it until now.


	3. Curufinwë Atarinkë - Metamorphosis

He suddenly thought, as the Doomsman called his name, how true it was.

It was all he’d ever been – the echo of his father. He’d heard it all his days.

“You look just like your father.”

“He clearly inherited his father’s talents as a craftsman.”

Even his mother hadn’t seen anything but his father when she looked at him. Every other son she gave a name of his own, something that would be his alone to shape as he would. Him she called Atarinkë. Little father. What else could he do but follow?

He had once sworn, looking in awe at his own newborn son, that he would better his father in this at least. His child would not know what it was to be seen only as a copy. His family would have his full attention, not merely whatever was left after he worked himself to exhaustion. That vow had burned away, ash in the face of the Oath his father had required of him.

His wife he’d left in Tirion – despite their love, she would not follow him in what she had warned him was a grave mistake. She’d begged him to leave their son as well, but he hadn’t been able to bear the thought of parting from his boy, barely an awkward adolescent. There was so much to teach him, so much a boy should learn from his father. He’d insisted on bringing his son.

He’d come to rue that decision, though as far as he knew, his father had never given his own decisions a second thought once made. But how could he not regret this? His child would have been far better off in Aman.

Though even that would have had its limits. The damage would still have been done. His son may not be known as his father’s copy, but he is known as much worse. Disown his father though he had, Tyelperinquar will ever be a Kinslayer’s son. No one, whether in these darkened lands or those across the Sea, will ever look at him in his own right. His son will never escape his father’s shadow.

He had somehow, without meaning to, become his father in this as well – he has blighted, if not outright destroyed, what he had loved best. 

He did not think his son would weep for him. He was not even sure that he should.


	4. Morifinwë Carnastir – Acheron, Cocytus, and Lethe

Death was a blessing, but not a gift.

Not when it meant that though he might finally leave behind the madness of these dark lands, he would still not see her again.

She received the Gift of Men. He died as an elf.

What would become of their child, he did not know. At least he had done that right – unlike Curvo’s boy, his son will not know the burden of being one of the Dispossessed, for he had been taken to the Falas young enough to forget his father’s face, too small to know his father had a name other than Atto. Had any other elf abandoned his child thus, he would have raged at them and called it cruelty. But for his son, it will be a kindness that none had seen the face of the hooded stranger who left him at Cirdan’s door.

Nor did he expect any to remember that while his brothers painted a masterpiece in blood and gore, he looked the other way as Dior’s little daughter was spirited away by Artanis’ husband. No one can fault him for not killing what he hadn't seen. 

After that, he hadn’t particularly tried to do anything – until he saw Curvo trying to kill Artanis. 

“Enough, Curufinwë!” he shouted. It was enough to break his brother’s concentration, just for a moment. “Stay this madness!”

The distraction worked – though not as he’d intended. Artanis’ stricken face as her blade found its mark told him all he needed to know. She had not meant the blow to be lethal. Even now she could not quite bring herself to kill them. Her husband might have done it cheerfully, but she still remembered the cousins who had been kind to her in her childhood.

She sank to her knees next to Curvo’s body, horrified at what she had just done. He couldn’t let her remain there – if she did, she would join him.

“Go, Artë,” he murmured, pulling her roughly to her feet before any of his brothers’ retainers could find her there. “No one will know. It might have been anyone. _Go_.”

She would have argued, for she was harsher in judgment on herself than she would be on any other, but he gave her the fierce look he had always used on her as a child, the only way he had ever found to quell her – and maybe it was slightly more effective coming from an elf holding a sword. 

She turned and fled.

That was when he’d decided he’d had enough. Let his brothers follow their father’s mad Oath if they would, but he was quite ready for the everlasting darkness if it meant he didn’t have to see another day like this.

It was not hard to find Sindar still fighting. All he had to do was follow the screaming. And when he found them, all he had to do was let them do what they had been doing the whole time – kill Noldor.

He tried to thank them, but he didn’t think they heard, or understood if they did.


	5. Pityafinwë Ambarussa – Right Behind You

After so many years torn between fear and hope, it was a surprise he had not been expecting.

He is still not sure how he survived Losgar. 

He supposed it must have been his brothers’ doing. He remembered very little of that time. They tell him in his pain and fury, he had spoken out against his father. He does not remember that. 

He remembers that someone had restrained him, someone had drugged him, someone had sat with him, someone had fed him. (He’s not sure if they were all the same someone, or different someones, or if maybe that was all tricks of his mind to prevent him from recognizing how badly he had failed his twin.) He had been made to keep living, no matter how much the sundering from his other half hurt.

It all seemed so silly now. Even if the others didn’t realize, Maitimo must have known how this would end. His brother might not have guessed in Tirion, but in Alqualondë he would have seen the inexorable conclusion. They had been doomed from the start.

But even his eldest brother – who he has stopped calling by name, for he will no longer answer to any of the names of his youth, and Ambarussa will not call him by that strange Sindarin one – could not have foreseen this.

A single flick of a single knife, wielded by a single child, undid all his brothers’ hard work. 

He barely had time to realize how very fast the blood was flowing, almost as if it too couldn’t wait to escape this life, before everything was going grey. 

He has but one thought: they will finally be whole again.


	6. Nelyafinwë Maitimo – Let It Burn

He was the only one who knowingly sought death. 

The Silmaril was burning his flesh, as if he needed any further proof that he is unclean. If he hadn’t been after Alqualondë, he certainly was after Thangorodrim. 

Thangorodrim – everyone remembers he was hung on the cliff. No one ever asked what came before that, although occasionally he will catch someone staring at his stump or his scars, the ever-present reminder of his imprisonment, visible to all. But they are not the worst scars he carries. Funny how everyone assumed that the torture that had left the scars they could _see_ must have been the worst.

No one ever looked for long. And they never asked. They don’t want to think about why he had begged Findekano to kill him. 

Finno should have listened. It would have been a kindness.

Moringotto had not been at all disappointed to see him ‘escape’. No, his gracious host had laughingly predicted his fate. 

“The last man standing,” he had purred. “You’ll be king of the ashes. How ironic that you will survive them all, when you knew it was folly from the beginning.”

He had clung to the idea that the Lord of Lies had sought to deceive him yet again, but time made his words ring ever truer. He may be bound and captive, awaiting Manwë’s judgement, but Maedhros knew their Enemy was laughing yet.

For he had led his people to ruin. 

Of the Noldor that had marched from Tirion, less than half still lived. Whole families had followed their princes and died. 

His own not the least.

Eldest of seven had he been, and more father than brother to all but Kano and Tyelko. Where are his brothers now? Of six brothers, only one yet lives. 

And that is not the worst of it.

Eldest grandchild of Finwë. Eldest of sixteen. Of his nine cousins, only one yet lives.

One brother. One cousin.

And Nienna save him – for Varda surely won’t – he no longer had the strength to watch them die.

It would not even matter which of them went first, Kano or Artë.

He doesn’t know for certain what would become of him, nor does he intend to find out. Considering he has managed to lead three Kinslayings while in his right mind, it can only be a mercy to prevent the world finding out what he would do when he is broken utterly.

If he died, would they live?

This is sin, and he knows it – for had he not decried Elwing for doing the same?

But if it is sin, it is a lesser sin than living. 

In the Void, there will be no one for him to hurt.


End file.
